A typical hospital stretcher is comprised of a metal frame supporting a mattress pad(s) on which a patient lies or sits. Some hospital stretchers are specially designed to allow x-rays to be taken while a patient is lying or sitting thereon. On these types of “x-ray stretchers,” a mattress pad is placed on a “radiolucent” support surface that allows x-rays to pass therethrough. An x-ray plate (conventionally referred to as an x-ray “cartridge” or x-ray “cassette”) is placed on a support surface below the mattress pad and below the radiolucent support surface. Such x-ray stretchers are cumbersome and expensive to fabricate. Furthermore, in such x-ray stretchers the x-ray cassette is positioned several inches below the patient. In other words, the x-ray cassette is separated from the patient by the mattress pad and the radiolucent support surface. As a result, the quality of the x-ray image is impaired.
The present invention addresses these and other problems of the prior art to provide a pad assembly that allows an x-ray cassette to be received within the pad assembly.